Grass is commonly maintained with lawn care machinery such as, for example, lawn mowers, lawn tractors, and/or the like. Walk-behind lawn mowers are often compact and inexpensive, and are usually configured with comparatively small engines of less than about 200 cubic centimeters (cc). At the other end of the spectrum, ride-on lawn tractors can be quite large, have engine sizes generally exceeding 400 cc, and can be configured with various functional accessories (e.g., trailers, tillers, and/or the like) in addition to grass cutting components. Riding lawn mowers often fall in the middle, providing the convenience of a riding vehicle as well as a typically larger cutting deck as compared to a walk-behind lawn mower.
However, prior riding lawn mowers have been unable to overcome various difficulties. For example, certain prior lawn mowers have required large, expensive engines in order to obtain sufficient operative power to carry a rider and/or to drive a desired size of cutting deck. Other riding lawn mowers have been expensive, having prices similar to prices of lawn tractors. Yet other riding lawn mowers have been undesirably large when boxed or otherwise configured for transportation and/or sale, limiting the types of vehicles that may be used to transport the lawn mower to a desired location (for example, from a retail store to the home of a purchaser).